Apple acknowledges some Leopard installation problems
Apple posted a support document over the weekend on its Web site addressing reports of interminable "blue screen" problems that caused some Mac users upgrading to Mac OS X Leopard no small degree of frustration.
Some attempts to upgrade to Leopard were stymied after the installation process was almost complete and users attempted to restart their machines. A long thread on Apple's discussion forums outlined the problems, in which their Macs would get hung up on the initial boot screen. That screen happens to be blue, inviting comparisons to the infamous Windows "blue screen of death" encountered when Windows crashes.
Apple said the problem could be related to "application enhancement software," and a Computerworld article identified Unsanity's APE software as the source of many complaints. Unsanity develops software that allows Mac users to customize the look and feel of Mac OS. An Unsanity representative told Computerworld that problems might occur only on outdated versions of APE that shipped before Apple switched to Intel's chips.
Problems were also noted in Apple's support forums by Mac users who had never installed the APE software, however, so it doesn't appear that all the blame can be placed on third-party enhancement software. Apple recommended two solutions for Leopard owners attempting to upgrade: novice users should reinstall Leopard using the "Archive and Install" method detailed here. Mac owners who have been around the block a few times can try the other solution, which involves using the command line to get rid of the application enhancement software.
If you've tried those suggestions and you're still having trouble completing the upgrade, check out the discussions forum on Apple's support page, and let us know what's going on.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
not be supported in future versions of Mac OS X.
my own intuition to install on a newly formated drive. I upgraded
and then froze mid way through. I redid the install, after refreshing
the drive, and it works perfect now. I can say that anyone installing
it should look at macfixit's recommendations for installation. After
getting things back up to par, Leopard is running excellently! All
hardware is fully functioning as are all the functions of the os.
Minus the minor hiccup in the install, all is well.
the best. But unlike Windows, where a clean install means many
hours of work reinstalling apps and data, Apple's Migration
Assistant does the job for me automatically.
With 2 Leopard installs down, and 10 more to go, I've had no
problems at all. (Thank you SuperDuper).
I image the Mac with SD. Do a clean install, then restore all files
and apps from the image. Everything is back, even my Desktop
Background.
What is SD? Can I image my old configuration to an external drive?
If so, how would I re-install the previously-installed programs
from it to the Mac now under Leopard? Would I need the original
disks and reinstall each app?
Thanks, Dave McA
I has clear-dock installed.
Used Carbon Copy Cloner, cloned the whole drive.
Buddy of mine had the blue screen. We just reinstalled with the
archive. worked fine.
since Friday... I did make a backup of my Tiger setup first, but
Leopard installed without a hitch. Everything has been working
just dandy. Lots of things are a notably snappier and better
threaded. Stuff like Safari waiting on a connection before doing
something else in the app is gone.
The only thing hat got me was that they changed where you set
the workgroup your Mac belongs to (for Windows file sharing).
Also, Leopard correctly kept my printer, but renamed it (which
went unnoticed until our au pairs Vista PC couldn't print -- why
doesn't Vista scan for IPP printers like other OS's do?).
The problem here is with APE -- and if you've been using Macs
for a while (or have an idea how APE works), you should have
expected it to cause a problem. The only thing is that everyone
knows Unsanity stuff breaks all sorts of things, the Leopard
installer should look for Unsanity apps and remove them to a
backup folder with a note that they will cause issues.
issue. He said that when his "blue screen" seemed to last a long
time, he shrugged and went to watched TV. Sure enough, a little
later his OS X 10.5 upgrade finished on its own.
He did mention that it lasted a long time, and he wondered
whether the upgrade had failed. But he was patient enough to give
it a chance to resolve on its own, and it did.
again that their hack would cause problems.
And yet Unsanity didn't bother to e-mail their users that older
versions of APE would be a problem until TODAY.
Sadly, Apple gets the bad publicity, and the vast majority of Mac
users who don't use nasty Mac OS 9-style hacks to 'adjust' their
OS settings haven't had a single problem.
Unsanity needs to find a better, documented way to ply their
wares. APE acts like virus - which is why it doesn't work
anymore, thanks to memory randomisaztion and sandobxing in
Mac OS X 10.5. Apple warned them three years ago that their
hackware wouldn't work after version 10.3.
Leopard forums are full of comments about the transparent dock and menubar. Why isn't the level of transparency user defined???
Good grief it is 2007 why can't users have control over their desktop!!
This message was typed on a machine using Microsoft's Vista Ultimate O/S, with no problems at all.
Feeling BLUE, perhaps you need a pick-me-up...
I would rather that it was an Amiga Guru Meditation Error instead, but save that for a future Mac OSX after Apple copies features from AmigaOS 5.0 which is soon to be released, and it is better than Mac OSX.
tomorrow.
No real problems yet, Adobe Creative Suite 2 works fine and that was my
major concern. The only thing so far was on the iMac where somehow the
sound output preference was changed from the internal speakers to the Griffin
iMic, I merely changed it back.
The transparent menus could be opaque as far as I am concerned, but I am
getting used to them.
should just admit it is a bad product....
Go to the Leopard forum at Apple and see the complaints about the transparent menu bar and dock etc.
There are already hacks to change them to opaque etc.
I avoid hacks but if Apple had provided a proper set of user preferences for these and other UI elements the need for hacks would be reduced and the instability they introduce would be gone!
Sorry to gloat, it's been a long time since us Windows users got to have a laugh at the Apple fans.
at the Apple fans."
It is estimated that 97% of Leopard installs resulted in the blue
screen of death.
The problem was already traced before the 'Dozers thought they
had something, and it's NOT a problem with Leopard.
So... all you nice lil Ballmer sycophants can crawl back under your
rocks, wishing upon your little stars that OS X will someday suck as
much as much as windows.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306857
Do you know what that proves? Windows still owns 90% of the market!
/sarcasm off
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306857
expect. When the install immediately hung for five minutes or
more upon restart, I knew there was something weird going on. I
noticed that the iMac was trying to access the disk of a connected
iPod, so I disconnected it and everything proceeded normally. I
would expect the iMac would know how to find its own primary
disk drive or at least ask which disk drive it should book
from/install to.
"DS ERROR: SYSTEM HALTED"
DS error was the code you got for an unrecoverable error. I always assumed it was something like, "Deranged stack".
One day I found "Inside Macintosh Volume I" at the local book store. I looked up the code. DS error was listed as "Deep sh_T!".
have to question for two reasons.
1: Many people don't know that they have installed applications
that have APE as part of their way of working with OS X. (Audio
Hijack is a good example.)
2:Removing APE fixes the problem with the user knows they
have APE on their system.
Insanity has always denied there's a problem, because they
know that some people would not buy supported products if
they knew how badly APE hacks the system. As for MacFixit, they
have a very poor reputation for doing everything they can to
make Mac users dependent on accessing their website to get hits
for advertising revenue. So what they say is questionable at best.
As with all new OSs, there will be problems. I knew the minute I
heard there were a few hangs here and there that APE was a
good candidate for this problem, and wasn't surprised when it
was demonstrated to be a culprit. That there may be a few other
reasons is not surprising. All Mac users know that there are
often a few problems with a .0 Mac OS update. That's a price we
pay for a small installed userbase. That developers didn't catch
this one is likely because they tend to own newer hardware and
those who don't probably disable apps that user APE on their
test machines, since it's a known trouble-maker. Too bad, since
they are testing the OS to begin with.
Give them credit, they are doing what they can to make it a better transition. There are always issues at first with any OS upgrade. It doesn't matter which OS you are using in that situation.
I will say I kind of wish they had chosen a different color than blue for the death screen. Now we have to rewrite all those BSOD jokes.
I find that the time machine is really cool and I never seen anything like this before, but boy is the backup process slow (the slowest backup I have ever seen in my life). Also, my G5 hangs when I come back away from it after a day or some, everything freezes and I can't even get to the terminal, so I have no choice but to press the button and hold it to shut it down.
I am not sure if this is because I am running the timemachine backup and doing other things, or what, but this has happened twice already.
On my laptop things work great, but then again, I havn't tried the time machine on it, as I have no external extra hard-drive for that.
- BootCamp
- by digitalworlds October 29, 2007 9:06 AM PDT
- Cannot get it to install on MACBOOK G5 Intel machine --
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- What is a G5 Intel?
- by ralfthedog October 29, 2007 12:08 PM PDT
- Boot camp will run on an Intel Mac. It will not run on a G5. I don't think you can both run a PPC G5 and an Intel processor.
- Like this
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (54 Comments)everything goes ok until it wants to start windows - blue screen of
eath comes up - "Session 3_ Initialization Failure"
Tried a total clean install -- even that did not work - but
downloaded Paralells and installed with no trouble :(